Does removing Confederate monuments “erase history”? (And what the hell does “erasing history” even mean?)
Posted: September 15, 2015 Filed under: racism, Tennessee politics | Tags: #noconfederatecampus, history, MTSU, Nathan Bedford Forrest Leave a commentCampaigns to remove Confederate iconography from public spaces tend to draw the criticism that doing so amounts to “erasing history.” I’m presently involved in an effort to rename MTSU’s ROTC building, now christened for Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave-trading, axe-murdering Klansman creep; I’ve encountered this argument frequently in this space.
Here’s an example from the Change Forrest Hall website:
And this from a local page:
However, it isn’t clear what “erasing history” actually means. (Nor am I sure the charge is sincere, rather than a political device. But I’ll treat it on its own terms.)
One problem is the ambiguity in the word “history.” It means more than one thing. It can suggest any of the following:
(1) The past;
(2) Historical artifacts;
Or
(3) The record of the past;
I’ll explore each of these options in turn.
“Erasing history” as erasing the past
Notice the critics say we “can’t” erase history. This suggests by “history” they mean the literal past; as of course we can’t undo what’s happened. But then, what’s all the fuss about? If we’re doomed to fail, you can safely afford to let us try. Yet there is a fuss. So something more must be going on.
I imagine they are saying: “Your campaign is ‘in effect’ an effort to erase the past, and even though you can’t literally do this, your efforts will cause damage along the way.” And this damage is precisely to (2) and (3) on our list (historical artifacts and/or the historical record). So I’ll turn to those now.
“Erasing history” as destroying historical artifacts
There does seem to be a worry that we are discarding important historical artifacts. For an extreme example, I’ve heard a commentator liken removal of Confederate icons to ISIS’ destruction of ancient Babylonian statuary. Certainly, this interpretation would explain the degree of ire directed toward such campaigns.
The only problem: The items targeted by these campaigns by and large aren’t historical artifacts. (At least, not in the sense our critics mean; they aren’t Civil War artifacts). Virtually all the contested images date from the period of the very late 1950s through the 1970s, when they were erected by reactionary whites as a giant, collective middle finger to the Civil Rights Movement. e.g. Forrest Hall was erected in 1958, four years after Brown v. Board of Education gave the order to desegregate public schools. The other two contested representations of Forrest in Middle TN date to the late 1970s (bust in the state Capitol) and late 1990s (the I-65 statue).
The most our critics can say, then, is that these items are artifacts about history; that is, contemporary items which represent something historical.
I’ll turn to these next.
“Erasing history” as destroying the record of the past
So then, is destroying these ‘artifacts about history’—present-day items which represent the past—tantamount to “erasing history”?
If this is what our critics mean—and by elimination, it appears that’s all they could mean—the charge seems a bit overblown. By this logic, each of the following would constitute “erasing history” too:
- allowing any history textbook to go out of print;
- rescinding a terrible, failing History 101 paper which was accidentally published by a small press;
- scrubbing “This is racist” protest graffiti off a statue of a confederate general (see below);
- removing hundreds of tiny uncooked-spaghetti sculptures of historical figures which I set about the town square overnight;
(Hell, while I’m at it, the blog post you’re reading contains a number of historical statements, so I’d be “erasing history” in the same sense if I took it offline.)
These examples are a bit silly—but that’s the point: Clearly, nobody could consistently believe that ‘contemporary representations the past’ is some untouchable class of items. To the extent they sometimes talk this way, they’re either confused or lying.
My kid drew this pic of Rutherford B. Hayes. Don’t ask me to take it down. That would be “erasing history.”
I imagine our critics might reply:
“When we say ‘erasing history’ we aren’t talking about pasta folk art and crappy term papers. We’re talking about erasing the good historical representations, or the important (or noble, well-made, competent, etc.) ones.”
OK, but so are we. We just differ about which ones those are.
The upshot is: As soon as you start discriminating among historical representations—saying, this is valuable, but this is expendable—you have conceded the basic point: Not all representations of the past are sacrosanct. And deciding which are important enough to keep around is an essentially moral enterprise; it will be determined by our values. There is no way around this. Sure, our values may differ, and you’re free to argue that Confederate iconography is socially uplifting (or whatever), but the point is—that’s the case you have to make. Do the fucking work, or don’t. But this pretense to neutrality—the whole, “it happened, good or bad, so just let it be” approach—isn’t enough.
* * *
Finally, the critics could still have a point. I mentioned “historical record” above. I use this phrase broadly, meaning the thing which all those “historical representations,” silly and otherwise, add up to. It could be argued: “Erasing” one or a couple pieces of this record does no real damage; but what if so much is destroyed that a subject becomes “lost” to history altogether?
Do our critics have reason to fear this will happen with Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate flag, and soforth, due to the opposition campaigns?
Uh, no.
Do some very rough math. First, we aren’t talking about just any historical representations, but those dedicated to the honor of some entity.[1] Honorariums constitute but a wispy little fraction of all existing historical representations. (Consider every book, museum, lecture, memory, conversation, spaghetti figure….) And we aren’t talking about all honorariums. Only a wispy little fraction of the total are in the cross-hairs for “erasure.”
Not to mention, “erasure” isn’t really on the table after all: Of the targeted memorials, almost none if any will actually be destroyed; they will simply be moved to another publically-accessible location, causing no net loss to the “historical record.” (For example, per the recent decision of the University of Texas-Austin to “remove” a statue of Jefferson Davis from campus, he will simply be relocated in UT’s Briscoe Center for American History.) Likewise, in the case of Forrest Hall, the name will almost certainly be replaced with that of another historical figure who was him/herself “erased” (or “undrawn” in the first place—surely just as bad) by not being there all along; so that, too, amounts to a “wash” for the historical record.
Even still: Let’s imagine the extreme case in which we succeeded in removing every honorarium to every historical figure—hell, even the good ones—in the entire country. We still wouldn’t touch a tenth of a tenth of of a percent of all existing historical representations of these figures and events. Not even almost.
So kindly put your fears to bed. They are infinitely misplaced. (And I think you probably fucking knew that.)
Notes
[1] An honorarium doesn’t just give facts about history; it doesn’t just say “this happened.” It says, this happened and it is good. Which points to another reason you can’t be neutral in this debate: Displaying an honorarium in public means we the public are saying “this is good.” And maybe we aren’t.
Read the transcript closely: Officer Darren Wilson implicitly confesses to murder
Posted: August 1, 2015 Filed under: cops, racism | Tags: Darren Wilson, Ferguson, Michael Brown, riot!, use of force continuum Leave a comment[The one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death is upon us. Rereading Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony, it occurs to me he essentially confesses to murder—and more than once.]
Many have detailed the absurdity of Wilson’s account of the Mike Brown shooting. The facts don’t jive with reality. Fewer have noted its inconsistency: The facts, absurd or no, don’t jive with each other. At some points, DW gives rationales to defend his behavior which are completely undermined by his words and behavior at later points. Perhaps worse, the DA never calls him on any of it.
Below are two of the more severe and seldom-emphasized examples.
Fatal inconsistency #1: Running vs. not running
The crux of DW’s defense is that he had to shoot Michael Brown to save his own life. Specifically, Brown was punching him in the face through the police car window and he thought the next blow might kill him. (He also testified that Brown began to reach for his gun; however, this was subsequent to his choice to draw and shoot.)[1]
Let’s ignore the patent implausibility of the “death blow” theory. (And the lack of evidence—when a picture of Wilson’s “injuries” was shown to the jury, the prosecutor literally didn’t know what they were looking at). As the normally-inclined-to-accept-the-police-narrative Nancy Grace asked, Why didn’t he simply “put the pedal to the metal and drive”?
To be fair, Wilson describes a fast-paced, chaotic episode of tussling, his hands flurrying to simultaneously block and grab at his attacker and open the car door to exit. Placing the car into drive and zooming off may not have been a clear option at all moments in this process.
But after the first shot is fired, the entire game changes. According to DW, the bullet sent Brown backward away from the car window and momentarily paused the struggle. One juror reiterates Grace:
“Did you ever think about, I know you said your vehicle was running, did you ever think about just getting in that bad boy and drive?”
(n.b. He’s already in the car, so “getting in” is figurative there. She’s asking why he didn’t just put it in gear and depress the gas when he clearly had a chance.)
His response:
Interesting—because not three pages earlier, DW is asked why he chose to exit the vehicle in the first place before waiting for backup, which he estimated to be less than 30 seconds away. (Or rather, why he tried to exit, as according to his testimony Brown prevented this from happening).
Wilson answers:
“Running” in response to being “chase[d]” certainly sounds like “fleeing conflict”—the thing he says he is “trained not to [do]”—after all. And the way he describes this, using the present tense (“my comfort zone is…”) indicates this is not only an option, but one he considers as a matter of routine: It is Wilson’s habit to place himself outside of his car when dealing with dealing with tense situations, in case they escalate to a point where he “need[s] to run.”
In fairness, it does appear that by “run” DW means something less than a “full retreat,” never to return to the action. Outside his car, he can maneuver for position, beat a strategic retreat to create space, collect himself and then resume the arrest, possibly with backup.
Fine. But this can all be done—all the better—in a car. Indeed, Wilson is forced to agree that he is “more mobile in a car than…on foot.” At a minimum, he could use the car to get out of the car: If Brown was blocking the door, as he testified, then drive up several feet, exit, and double back.
Instead, Wilson chose to shoot Brown from inside the car—not once, but twice. Think about that. Even if you accept he couldn’t drive away before the first shot (which is false—he had to have both hands free to rack the slide), he clearly could afterward. By his own admission, his choices were: (1) Drive forward a bit and see what happens, or (2) kill someone. And he chose (albeit unsuccessfully, at first) the latter. This is, plainly and simply, attempted murder.
Fatal inconsistency #2: Checking vs. not checking UOFC
To justify his choice to shoot Brown, Wilson appeals to the policing technique “triangle of force,” more commonly known as the “use of force continuum.” This is a scale police use to rank methods of controlling a suspect from non-lethal to most lethal. It is designed to help officers comply with the legal obligation to apply only as much force as is needed to neutralize a given threat. Put simply, you can’t escalate to more dangerous techniques until all feasible safer ones have been tried.
According to Wilson’s testimony, verbal commands and ‘empty hand control’ fail to rebuff Brown’s blows, and he left his taser at the station because—seriously—he’s too lazy to carry it. So he mentally cycles through the “triangle” of remaining options, the escalating list of possible defenses he can use.
He considers and rejects the following in turn:
- mace: runs the risk of blowback in the confined space of the car, incapacitating himself;
- ASP (telescoping baton): located on back of belt, hard to access from a sitting position; narrow space of the car would prevent expansion, and if expanded, can’t get a good swing;
- flashlight: can’t get a good swing;
In addition, Wilson testifies, retrieving each of these items would require “sacrificing” his left hand, which he “wasn’t willing to do” as it was engaged in blocking Brown’s blows.
* * *
To summarize Wilson’s position: Each less-than-lethal option is rejected due to his operating within the “close and confined” space of the police car; a space he is confined to, in turn, because Brown was preventing his exit; this rejection left him no choice but the gun.
Put crudely, the line of causality goes:
Brown’s attack –> confined to the car –> had to shoot
The chief problem with this justification is that Wilson goes on to successfully exit the car and to shoot Brown from that position as well.
After the shot from the car wounds Brown, he retreats and is followed on foot by DW, who shoots again when Brown (allegedly) spins around and “charges” him.[2]
By his own testimony, upon exiting and gaining space from Brown, Wilson needs to check the “triangle” again for the least forceful but effective option available. But he never does—he simply imports the check from the car. Indeed, the first (and only) thing he tells his sergeant responding to the scene is “he tried to grab my gun, I had to shoot him”—ignoring the fact that the fatal shot(s) came after the “grabbing,” with Brown nowhere near the weapon. This is like saying I had to hit my dog on the nose today because he had a smaller dog in his jaws last Tuesday.
Outside of the vehicle, every reason Wilson chose “deadly force” in the prior case no longer applies. He is free to—and indeed, must—consider the full range of forceful options from hand control to mace to baton. (Or indeed, a tactical retreat by foot—the entire reason he said he wanted to exit the car in the first place.) But Wilson just shoots—again.
He never explains this “leap” across the force continuum, which ended in the death of Michael Brown; nor is he asked by the DA to explain it. Again, the word for this is murder.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Notes
[1] Indeed, even in Wilson’s narrative, it sounds like Brown “reached for” the drawn gun to save his own life; rather than attempting to grab it, he pushed it away from himself, driving it down into Wilson’s hip.
[2] “Charges” if (and only if) you believe the one witness (#10) who concurs with Wilson’s account, and who happens to be the most inconsistent.
Reflections on the anniversary of Eric Garner’s murder; Or: Actually, smartass, sometimes you *can* talk when you can’t breathe
Posted: July 17, 2015 Filed under: cops, racism | Tags: Eric Garner Leave a comment
I’ve heard it dozens of times and a year on, I’m still hearing it: If Eric Garner really couldn’t breathe due to chokehold, he couldn’t possibly have said (as he did repeatedly) “I can’t breathe.” The implication of course is that Garner was all drama and the police were correct to ignore his pleas.
Behind this response is, as always, plain and simple racism. But it also stems from a misplaced focus on the “chokehold” aspect of the case. This focus is somewhat understandable: The chokehold launched the assault on Garner, it’s a distinct and recognizable move, it’s dramatic—and it’s illegal. Nonetheless, this emphasis has somewhat warped the analysis on “both sides.”
Windpipe constriction versus chest compression
Yes, a chokehold which completely cuts off the windpipe prevents both breathing and speech. But this is irrelevant to Garner’s case. For one, the chokehold had already been released by the first time Garner said, “I can’t breathe.”
Alongside “neck compression,” the medical examiner cited “chest compression” as cause of death. The latter ostensibly occurred when Garner was taken to the ground, prone and face-down. This alone can give a man of his size trouble breathing, but it was severely exacerbated when Officer Pantaleo proceeded to fucking kneel on his head and upper back. It was this move which immediately precipitated the first “I can’t breathe” plea. At which point, six more officers piled on top of Garner, the weight and strength of each aggravating the compression further.
Unlike a chokehold, chest compression doesn’t have to prevent speech. The key to speech is exhalation. Windpipe restriction prevents this, along with inhalation. But chest compression is a one way street: It permits exhalation—at least to the point where the air already in the lungs when the compression occurs is exhausted. However, it does not permit inhalation, so once this air is up, speech is done so long as the compression remains.
(Note: This is not the say the chokehold wasn’t a contributor to Garner’s death. Among other things, it would have induced stress and accelerated his heart rate, which would have quickened his breathing; this in turn made compression more dangerous, as the amount of air needed across a given period was increased.)
I bring all this up because it remains standard police practice to restrain and cuff suspects prone on their stomachs—a process which can take several minutes. This, even as the practice is being rapidly abandoned by mental health facilities across the country in light of its demonstrated potential to kill (see Restraint-Related Positional Asphyxia).
Deeper issues: White charity is for other whites
For the sake of argument, I’ll assume the widespread perception—that Garner made his statements while in a chokehold—because it points to deeper issues.
To see this, let’s rewind a bit. The opinion of our smartass observer is that Garner was not subject to a “real” (i.e., dangerous, breath-restricting) chokehold because he was (still) able to speak during this event.
This view assumes that a chokehold would have had to have been perfectly secure throughout this event. Clearly however, in a “tussle,” it is possible for the choker’s grip to tighten and then loosen as the strugglers’ bodies move relative to one another. It seems reasonable that someone in Garner’s position might experience inability to breathe when the grip is tight, and then, when it loosens a bit, exclaim “I can’t breathe” in reference to what he fears is an ongoing pattern of loosening and retightening-to-come.
Surely a man in such a position can be forgiven for not taking the time to qualify for his attackers, “I couldn’t breathe a second ago, and I anticipate that if this struggle continues in this manner I’ll not be able to breathe again momentarily.”
* * *
The fact that the assholes don’t even entertain this interpretation of Garner’s last words is profoundly telling. It has to be. I mean, shit. We interpret things this way all the time: e.g. When someone answers the phone with “I can’t talk right now,” nobody thinks, “That lying asshole—how could he not talk when he had to talk to even tell me that?”
That would be absurd, right? So extend the same fucking imaginative charity to Eric Garner: What might the man have meant? Is there some non-absurd intention we can reasonably tease out of his words? If you make that move for other white people every day but maintain a goofy hyper-literalism for Garner, there has to be a reason. And that reason is almost certainly that you’re a racist prick.
“It can’t be racist to criticize a religion” and other Islamophobic nonsense
Posted: November 17, 2014 Filed under: Islamophobia, racism | Tags: "Islam is a race not a religion", Dean Obeidallah, Eric Allen Bell says dumb shit like this all the time, Marlon Brando, this shit is waaay too easy Leave a commentYou’ve probably seen the exchange where Ben Affleck calls Bill Maher “racist” for his handy generalizations about “the Muslim world.”
This charge has somewhat reinvigorated the “religion not a race” defense among Islamophobes.
For example:
I never knew Dave Chappelle was muslim
It should be enough to respond: “Well, yes it is racist, if the criticism is motivated by race.” Only thing, the Islamophobes speak as though this were impossible. This screenshot is entirely typical:
Cannot be? But why? What exactly is the argument here?
Clearly, it isn’t enough to say Islam is “a religion, not a race.” I may as well say the NAACP is “an organization, not a race,” and therefore it cannot be the target of racism.
They—the Caucasion ones, let’s say—probably mean something like: “Islam has a multi-racial membership and includes white devotees. Any criticism implicates white Muslims. Therefore, a criticism on racial grounds would be self-contradictory or absurd.”
One is tempted to counter: But people say and do contradictory, absurd things all the time. This is hardly “impossible.” As if racism should offer some perfectly coherent, rational system of thought.
But more can and should be said here, given the prevalence of the “meme” in question.
Racism toward other multi-racial groups
One problem with the “religion not race” defense: It is easy to think of other groups and practices which are clearly the target of racist views, but in which, like Islam, whites also participate; in other words, cases where white membership does not give immunity to racism.
For example, miscegenation (or “race mixing,” in old-school racist parlance): By definition, the “membership” of the institution of mixed marriage—or, if you like, of a given mixed-race couple—is not exclusively one race. The ones I (and white racists) have in mind have 50% white participation. And yet, these unions have frequently been opposed—even outlawed—on openly racist grounds (“diminishing the superior stock” and such). So why should a religion—whose white membership is a far smaller percentage—be immune to the same?
Likewise for formal organizations and movements. Nobody can deny that the African-American Civil Rights Movement earned racist contempt, even though it enjoyed high-profile white participation from the start. To have defended, “but it’s a movement, not a race” would have been absurd.
When whites-only golf and country clubs began integrating in the 1970s, many white members abandoned them—on admittedly racist grounds. The fact that these clubs remained 99% white did not magically dissolve the racist quality of this critique.
* * *
Note: In all these cases, not only did white participation fail to render “racist criticism” impossible, the white participants were not exempted in such attacks. Quite the contrary: Often, special ire was reserved for “race traitors,” e.g. the white spouses, the country club leaders or voting majority who sanctioned integration, or the whites who marched alongside black leaders.
As the picture below illustrates, certain sentiments (e.g. “n****r-lover”) were directed only to whites, yet remained indisputably racist, attacking non-whites by implication.
Marlon Brando: 100% white, yet victim of…anti-black racism???! Islamophobic peabrains = blown
(A similar phenomenon happens when white suburban youth are attacked for appropriating black stereotypes. Saying, “Pull up your pants and turn down that n****r music,” is clearly a racist sentiment, even when directed against a racially-mixed or all-white group of kids. But if “sag-phobia” and “rap-phobia” can be racist, despite the existence of white saggers and rap fans, why are we so sure Islamophobia can’t be, simply because there are white Muslims?)
Conclusion
So no, it isn’t actually necessary for a group or practice to be monolitically non-white to be the subject of racist attack. It is only necessary that it be someway associated with some non-white group or groups that are themselves the subject of racist attack. No, the Civil Rights Movement and gangster rap are not “a race,” but are clearly associated with one in particular. That doesn’t make every attack on these things racist—one could criticize the CRM on tactical grounds, and hip-hop on aesthetic grounds—but it sure as fuck makes it possible to do so. It isn’t clear how the same logic should not apply to Islam.
Consider the statement by a reporter covering the Boston Marathon bombing that the suspect was “Muslim-looking.” Yes, he misspoke, but everybody knew what he meant. By sheer accident of history, Islam is closely associated with certain non-white races and cultures of the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. These groups account for its origins and initial spread and comprise the populations of Muslim-majority countries today. Most Muslims are members of these groups, even those living in the West. And these groups, religion aside, are historically subject to racist ideologies.
All of the ingredients are there. And while this doesn’t prove that Islamophobia is racist per se, it is ridiculous to say that it cannot be. People must stop relying on this facile assumption to dismiss the charge of racism out of hand.
* * *
I do believe Islamophobia is largely about race, but I will tackle that in another post.
But here is a hint: Prior to 9/11, Arab-Americans enjoyed broad recognition as a “model minority”; many simply identified as white. After the attacks, this changed. Comedian Dean Obeidallah jested, “I go to bed September 10th white, wake up September 11th, I am an Arab.” Islamophobia went mainstream virtually overnight. Granted, certain groups were actively promoting this, but what is notable is how little effort and money (one theorist estimates $50 million) it took them to do it.
This, combined with the sheer irrationality of Islamophobia, suggests the groundwork was laid in advance. American white supremacy proved a fertile soil for the seeds of Muslim-fear to sprout. The spike in anti-Muslim violence in the wake of electing our first black president (up 50% by 2010)—and of course the “Obama is a Muslim” trope in itself—only confirm this thesis.
But yeah, more on this later.
Reflections on the racist murder of Jordan Davis by the racist Michael Dunn [REVISED]
Posted: October 2, 2014 Filed under: racism | Tags: Jordan Davis, justice, let 'em know, Michael Dunn, Stand Your Ground, we need a black fatwa Leave a commentMichael Dunn was just found guilty of first degree murder in the “loud music” shooting death of 17-year old Jordan Davis in Florida.
Dunn had already been convicted of four lesser charges in February. However, that jury deadlocked on the murder charge. Prosecutors chose to retry him on that charge alone and were successful. This of course is great news, unless you’re a cracker or a dipshit.
Jordan Davis is dead because he was black
When I say Davis was murdered for being black, I’m not being hyperbolic or speculative or inferring inductively from similar cases.
Consider: While this case has been branded as a fight over “loud music,” Dunn’s wife testified that Dunn took issue with the genre, rather than volume, of Davis’ music—calling it “thug music.” It’s no great secret that racist whites in the “post-racial” era use “thug” as code for “young, male and black.” But even giving Dunn the benefit of the doubt, in letters from prison, he uses the term interchangeably with “black.” And genre aside, he labeled the boys in the car with the synonymous term “gangsters.”
Consider further: Jordan Davis appeared to Dunn from the neck up, much as he does in this by now well-known pic:
Now ask yourself: If this is a “gangster,” precisely which features of this image would we need to change—apart from the substitution of white skin for black—in order to disqualify it from “gangster” status? Was Jordan supposed to wear a priest’s collar? Smoke a Sherlock Holmes pipe? Don a top hat and a fucking monocle? If not that, then what exactly, apart from white skin, was the issue?
Let’s be honest. Blackness alone qualified Davis as a “gangster,” and it marked him for death.
Stand Your Ground, again
Though it hasn’t been emphasized in the reporting, it was the defense’s choice to pursue a Stand Your Ground (SYG) strategy in the first trial that delayed justice. Eight out of ten jurors indicated that, but for the judge’s direction to heed this defense, they would probably have voted to convict in the first degree.
Florida’s SYG law specifies: A person may use force, “including deadly force[,] if [he] reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself ….” It includes an explicit “no duty to retreat,” having replaced the prior ‘deadly force’ law which allowed use of force only if retreat were impossible.
The law does state that the suspect’s belief that he is in mortal danger has to be “reasonable.” In principle, this part of the law could play a robust role. But unfortunately, (a) what counts as “reasonable” is nowhere specified in the law; and (b) for reasons not entirely clear to me, the “reasonable” clause is being ignored in application of the law.
In the Dunn trial, the “reasonable” qualifier was omitted in numerous jury instructions by the judge, emphasizing instead the “no duty to retreat” clause. The defense followed suit, arguing that what matters is “only if [Dunn] believed, right or wrong,” that his life was in danger.
There is reason to suspect this truncation of the law is commonplace is FL courtrooms. This omission has the effect of fetishizing the offender’s own perception of imminent danger—however grossly mistaken this perception may be. This is a serious matter: Three decades-plus of scientific study shows that whites like Dunn, even those who hold no overtly racist ideas, are likely to perceive black men like Davis as more threatening than they really are, and to manufacture ‘perceptions’ and even false memories to support that view. (See sect (2)(b) of my earlier post for the evidence.) The failure to examine the legal “reasonableness” of perceptions of threat makes an already shitty law worse; it vacates the chance to identify and account for any latent racism at work in both the defendant’s perceptions and the jury’s own beliefs.
Dunn was not in fear of his life
That said, Dunn never really had a good SYG defense, truncated version or not, and jurors were wrong to think he did. I say this because: Even if Dunn did face an imminent mortal threat in Jordan Davis, there is abundant evidence that he did not in fact perceive himself to.
The essence of SYG is that, even if defensive options short of deadly force (e.g. retreat) are available, one is legally free to ignore them. But there this knife has another edge: Failure to take one of these lesser options can itself be evidence that one did not perceive an imminent threat in the first place. That is, if Dunn’s safety would have been clearly better served by a retreat—that is, if “standing ground” was clearly more dangerous than leaving—this counts against his claim that he faced a mortal threat to begin with.
This possibility is implicit in the language of the law but so far absent from its application. But consider:
Dunn claimed that Jordan brandished a shotgun and threatened to “kill him.” Dunn responded to this “imminent threat” by asking for verbal clarification of the threat—“What did you say to me?—then ambled to his car to retrieve (and possibly load) a pistol from his glove compartment, then physically returned to the “threat” and began firing, finally chasing the “threat,” still shooting, as Davis squealed away in fear. Dunn had to know that simply leaving was more likely to keep him safe. But he stood and fought anyway. This isn’t the behavior of a “mortally scared” person; it is the behavior of a homicidal aggressor.
Witnesses heard Dunn say, “You’re not going to talk to me like that,” before (or rather as) he attacked. Really, is this how one responds to a verbal threat one takes seriously?—to emphasize its form rather than content? No way. If someone breaks in my house and holds a knife to my throat, I don’t get fucking offended about his churlish tone of voice. I get scared for my life. Dunn didn’t get scared; he got the vapors.
In the end, Stand Your Ground couldn’t protect Dunn. But it almost did. And someone else will get a chance to try it on, and soon. And the most likely beneficiary of this defense, when it works, will be a white killer of a black victim. The fact that these outcomes are patterned amounts to no less than state sanctioning of these deaths. And this has effects prior to and outside the courtroom. Quite frankly, it sends a message.
Dunn’s sentence is a victory and I’m not going to hate on it. But it is a rare one indeed, and for a reason.
john brown's ghost 